Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian | Short Fiction
July, 2013Muharem Bazdulj was born in 1977 in Travnik, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has published several novels and short story collections, including Druga knjiga (2000), which was awarded the Book of the Year prize by Open Society Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2005, the Northwestern University Press series Writings from an Unbound Europe published it in English translation. Bazdulj's work has been featured in international anthologies such as The Wall in My Head, published on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Best European Fiction 2012 (Dalkey Archive Press). His short stories and essays have appeared in World Literature Today, Creative Nonfiction, Habitus, and Absinthe, among other literary journals. Two of his early novels are available in German translation: Der Ungläubige und Zulejha (2008) and Transit.Komet.Eklipse (2011). He works as a journalist for the Bosnian daily Oslobođenje, and the Association of Journalists of Bosnia and Herzegovina honored him as the country's best journalist in 2012.
German | Germany | Short Fiction
January, 2013Fleeing a bad economy, the narrator of "Here, It's Quiet" leaves her beloved Berlin to take a job in a sedate, southern German city. Adjusting to her new home, she misses the noise and grittiness of the city she left behind, as well as the boyfriend who refused to come with her. She spends her evenings at the opera and visits the museum during her lunch hour, engaging with art as a way of escaping her banal work life and inuring herself from her personal turmoil. This story from a 2004 collection touches on themes author Anna Katharina Hahn continued to explore in her most recent novel, Am Schwarzen Berg, in particular the conflict between a lifestyle centered on an appreciation for art and the economic choices necessary to support that lifestyle.
Greece | Modern Greek | Short Fiction
August, 2012Something Will Happen, You'll See, the 2010 short fiction collection by Christos Ikonomou from which "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" is taken, is a wrenching yet optimistic elegy to Greece's working classes. It won the prestigious Best Short Story Collection State Award and was the most-reviewed Greek book of 2011.
Ikonomou takes us to the heart of the western suburbs of the port of Piraeus and builds sixteen luminous stories around characters such as pensioners, protesters, laborers, and the unemployed. The author's greatest strength lies in his ability to convey silences, to interpret gestures and the unseen, and translate them into images both vivid and haunting.
Something Will Happen, You'll See has been translated into Italian (Editori Riuniti, 2012), and the Italian newspaper La Repubblica described Christos Ikonomou as "the Greek Faulkner." A German edition (C.H. Beck) is forthcoming.
Italian | Italy | Short Fiction
August, 2012Monica Sarsini was born in Florence, where she lives and teaches writing. She is also an artist who has shown her work in Italy and other countries. Libro Luminoso (Exit Edizioni, 1982) was followed by Crepacuore, Crepapelle and others. A collection of her work was published in English under the title of Eruptions (Italica Press, 1999).
Catalan | Short Fiction | Spain
August, 2012No Third Parties Are Involved is a collection of ten stories about the follies of modern life. They feature a mix of odd situations--ridiculous, decadent, comic, or endearing--and a broad array of characters that includes a Nobel Prize-winning writer, a journalist who doesn't use a tape recorder or notebook, a late-night game show host, and an actress who has turned the corner into middle age. Author Empar Moliner presents--as she usually does--sketches of the everyday whose authenticity can touch a nerve, as many people, men and women alike, can easily recognize aspects of themselves in her characters. With her customary energy, she portrays situations of contemporary urban life through a filter of perceptive irony: Empar Moliner strips the world naked, amid wine, music, the internet, drugs and the city.
Russia | Russian | Short Fiction
June, 2012This transposition of "The Nose" by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol represents the first publication of a story in this newly developed genre. It takes Gogol's original narrative (about a man who loses his nose) and shifts it from Saint Petersburg, Russia in the 19th century to New York City in the 21st century on a systematic basis similar to translation.
In the essay accompanying his transposition, Henry Whittlesey explains some of the differences between translation, transposition, and adaptation, since transposition falls between translation and adaptation. The transposition of "The Nose" represents a purely literary transposition that retains the form and shifts the content of the original story. This essay looks into five important aspects related to a transposition of content: character, setting, consciousness, identity, and the narrator's voice. As the content shifts from 19th-century Saint Petersburg to 21st-century New York, these five elements undergo various degrees of transfiguration, depending on the extent to which their manifestation in the original is commensurate with the given phenomenon in the present day.
Croatia | Croatian | Short Fiction
June, 2012Buddy lives in a provincial town in Croatia with his elder brother, sister-in-law, and father, whose mind is deteriorating. Buddy's mother died when he was small. Soccer is his big love, and he dreams of becoming a professional player after school. The monotony of family life is interrupted one day when Buddy is approached by an agent from one of the country's big soccer clubs--with an enticing proposition that poses big challenges for Buddy and his family.
Arabic | Short Fiction | Tunisia
June, 2012Hassan Nasr was born in 1937 in Tunis. He has been active in Tunisian literary life since Independence in 1956, and started publishing short stories in magazines in 1959. He studied literature in Tunis and Baghdad, and lived for two years in Mauritania. He worked mainly as a high school teacher while writing short stories and novels. He lives in Tunis. The translation by William Hutchins of his novel Return to Dar al-Basha was published in 2006 by Syracuse University Press. His other novels include Sijillat Ra's al-Dik (Mr. Cockhead's Files, 2001), Dahaliz al-Layl (Corridors of the Night, 1977), Khubz al-Ard (Bread from the Earth, 1987) and Ka'inat al-Mujannaha (Winged Creatures, 2010). His short story collections include: Layali al-Matar (Rainy Nights, 1978), 52 Layla (52 Nights, 1979), al-Sahar wa-l-Jurh (Insomnia and the Wound, 1989), and Khuyul al-Fajr (Pipe-dreams, 1997).
Short Fiction | Spain | Spanish
April, 2012As part of a collection of short stories in which each protagonist is presented with the opportunity to evaluate her life by what she has or what she perceives to be missing, "Ursula," occupying the imprecise realm between short story and novella, is a quiet story of the tension in a marriage threatened by personal goals and serves as a strong reminder that the seemingly small decisions are what come to define who we are and have the power to change the course of our lives.
Arabic | Kuwait | Short Fiction
October, 2011Fatima Yousef al-Ali is known for her stories about Kuwaiti women. She praises her father’s encouragement for her career and says that while she is happily married, few of her characters are. She portrays the lives of women from different strata of Kuwait society, whether the school assistant in “Behind a Locked Window,” the schoolgirl in “Nothing Shameful,” or the wealthy sophisticate in “A Woman’s Pains Never End.”
Being a pioneering Kuwaiti woman author has meant a degree of marginalization, evidenced by a need to improvise publishing arrangements. One benefit of writing beneath the radar of public scrutiny, though, has been her ability to describe and discuss human sexuality in a candid fashion.
Fatima Yousef al-Ali’s short stories open a window on a world that seems a bit mysterious to some Americans. The heroine’s spouse in “Vote for Me!” is not overtly abusive but will certainly not be voting for her. The administrator of public grants detects so many flaws in the applicants that he decides to award all of them to himself. Lismira, in her story, is stranded in a gloomy city far from Kuwait and from her lover and her spouse. The heroine in “A Woman’s Pains Never End” is as much a predator as the self-righteous religious admirer who climbs in bed with her in a hotel room in Asia and scratches her with his beard. It is hard to strike the right balance in considering the status of women in Kuwait. Fatima Yousef al-Ali's depictions of women from many walks of life help the reader better understand the challenges facing them, and thus helps us learn more about ourselves, too.
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We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
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